Friday, July 3, 2015

California Botany Batting Average

The Consortium of California Herbaria database continues to
grow. The rate plot shown below suggests
that for the past year the rate of additions has become constant.

Added are an average of 341 specimen records per day

The ability of individual botanists and governmental
agencies to keep up with the constant, essentially relentless, addition of data suggests to me a PROBLEM. We should not to stop
adding records, but we do need a mechanism that new records get moved between
platforms (vis. Calflora, CNDDB) instantly.

Conservation of the endemic rich California
flora is dependent on good data. Funding
to support programming/application development that would result in real-time
data ought to be a distinct objective that merits the attention of botanists.